Irrational beliefs hurt all of us when you hand power to the ignorant

I’m sitting in a restaurant listening to a financial genius explain how to fix the economy. There’s a guy near me who says the government simply has to give $1 million to everybody 55 or older — on the condition that the person buy a car and a house. Voila. Economy fixed.

Where do you start with people who know this little, but are certain they know everything — and who believe they’re qualified and morally justified in trying to force their insane ideas on other people?

I think about this question a lot whenever I start thinking of our majoritarian political system. When people say they believe so adamantly in democracy, what I think they’re really saying is that they believe they’re right — and that if people would simply listen to them, all problems would be solved. What’s more, I find that most people honestly believe that the majority really believe the same basic things they believe. I can’t figure out the cause of this delusioin.

It’s not just in politics and economics where I see this. I was reading comments on a college football discussion board Saturday after a game, and a “recliner coach” was weighing in with his advice to the University of Alabama’s coaches. Alabama had just beaten another ranked team really badly, far worse than anyone expected, but this genius was there to explain what the coaches were doing wrong.

“The coaches learned nada from the [rival] game last year. We come out aggressive, fake punt on the first series — great. Get up by 10, and start trying to run clock and play not to lose in the freakin first half. Come on man.”

It’s bad enough when unqualified people whine and complain after their teams lose. At least that’s understandable, because people are trying to blow off steam. But you’re taking the arrogance to a whole different level when you do the same thing after your team wins 38-14 in what was expected to be a close game.

I suspect this is just a part of human nature that’s hard to overcome. For most people, it’s very, very difficult to say, “I don’t know,” so they spend years pretending they know. Before they realize it, they believe their own lies.

When people behave this way in areas of life without real consequences, it’s irritating, but it’s not really that big a deal. I’m not worried about the online geeks who lecture tech companies about what their products should have been. I’m not worried about the football fan anonymously lecturing Nick Saban about what he should have done in Saturday’s football game. But I am worried about the effect of these irrational people on the rest of us when they participate in a system that gives them the power to force their beliefs on us.

The bottom line is that the vast majority of people are hugely ignorant in areas about which they are supremely confident. All of us are ignorant about some things. (I certainly include myself among that number in a big way.) But it’s not a problem until you take naturally ignorant people and give them the arrogance of believing they know more than they do — and then you give these people power.

If you have hopes that a majoritarian political system can work (especially in an age when public discourse is fueled by TV-addled minds), you’re fooling yourself. We need the freedom to make our own decisions as they affect us — even when we’re ignorant — but we don’t have the right to drag others down by forcing our ignorance on them.